Kenyan Female Marriage Traditions

8 hours from Nairobi, Kenya is Kuria, Kenya, a village in which most men have multiple wives and women often marry other women. The tradition of female to female marriage is referred to as “Nyumba Mboke” (pronounced “nee-yom bom-bah-kay”). Woman to woman marriage is actually quite common across the African continent. The reason female intersex marriages are common is due solely to the birth of a male heir. When African women grow into adulthood, they typically leave their families to move in with the families of their husbands, taking over for their husband’s parents in the various chores of daily life (e.g. cooking, cleaning, acquiring water and firewood etc.). In contrast to this, males always stay with their family and bring their wife to live within their home so that she can take care of the mans aging parents. When a woman cannot produce a male heir or when every male heir she has birthed dies, a secondary wife is usually taken on to help birth new life. Older and more established families often take on a wife for the head wife of the family as a sort of surrogate daughter-in-law